Commercial airliners and other aircraft typically employ a nose-mounted radar antenna for a weather or other radar system. Nose-mounted radomes of fiber glass or other construction substantially transparent to electromagnetic radiation are used to cover and protect such antennas. The required accuracy of azimuth and other data derived in operation of weather radars has necessitated that the transmission characteristics of each radome be subjected to extensive testing on a sophisticated antenna range. Such testing, in order to determine radome transmission efficiency, reflection loss, reflection lobes, beam deflection, beam broadening, sidelobe increase, etc., is both expensive and time consuming.
A radome mounted on the nose of an airliner is subject to in-flight damage from hail, bird strikes, lightning and static electricity, as well as to accidental impact damage while the aircraft is on the ground. Damage to a radome may be sufficient to require its removal and repair. Following such repair, it has typically been necessary to send the radome to an antenna range for testing to assure that the repair (e.g., reconstruction of the radome wall to repair a hole) has not resulted in an area of the radome having transmission characteristics which do not meet the required specifications for reflection loss or other of the characteristics listed above. The advent of weather radar systems having capabilities for detection of windshear conditions has increased the need for adequate testing of radomes, particularly after repair, in view of the areas of increased radar performance necessary for effective detection of conditions indicative of the occurrence of windshear effects.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide radome test systems and methods enabling radomes to be tested or retested efficiently and accurately without requiring access to an antenna test range.
Additional objects are to provide new and improved radome test systems and methods, and such systems enabling evaluation of transmission characteristics, particularly after removal and repair of a radome previously tested and installed on an aircraft.